May 2016 - stuartbingham.com

STUART BINGHAM is determined to start his season right over a week of qualifying tournaments at Preston Guild Hall which will define his summer.

Ball Run will start the new campaign at the Indian Open Qualifiers (May 28-30), the World Open Qualifiers (May 31 to June 2) and Riga Masters Qualifiers (June 3-4).

Bingham warmed up this week by practicing with world No 77 Martin O’Donnell and 2005 world champion Shaun Murphy and says his game is in a good place after the short off-season break.

He said: “I was practicing on my own but felt I needed to play some other players and see how that went.

“I played Martin the other day and I came out on top, so that was a good sign because he is a good player.

STUART BINGHAM has warned the “joke” decision to make the Shoot-Out a ranking event could cost a top player a place at the Crucible.

World Snooker announced today (May 11) that money earned at the shot-clock timed, one frame knock-out tournament will count towards the sport’s money ranking list when it is next staged in February 2017.

The competition will be opened up to all 128 of the Tour’s players and not just the top 64 seeds, as has been the case since it started in 2011.

And world No 2 Bingham is one of a number of critics of the decision, saying it could see snooker’s biggest stars failing to qualifying for the biggest tournaments because they dropped prize money at a tournament which is supposed to be “a bit of fun”.

The 2015 world champion, who made the Shoot-Out final in 2014 (pictured above) but has gone out in the early rounds in the past two years, said: “I think it is an absolute joke. My last two defeats in that tournament came after my opponents fluked reds then made 30s. How can you have ranking money riding on a set-up like that?